Leeds Arts University (LAU) is a specialist higher education institution supporting the development of the next generation of artists, designers and creative professionals.
Alongside developing their creative practice, many students are preparing to work freelance, launch their own businesses or build careers where being able to promote themselves and their work is essential.
Youbee Media first partnered with Leeds Arts University to bring real-world digital marketing experience into its enterprise and employability programme, giving students practical skills they could apply to their own creative ventures.
What began with individual social media workshops has developed into a long-standing relationship, with Youbee Media continuing to deliver training for Leeds Arts University and its students in 2025 and 2026.
For today's students, social media is already part of everyday life. The challenge is helping them look at these platforms differently — not simply as somewhere to consume and share content, but as powerful tools for building a profile, reaching an audience and growing a creative business.
Our workshops needed to make digital marketing accessible, practical and relevant to students who may be highly skilled creatively but have limited experience of promoting themselves commercially.
Through our tailored marketing workshops, Youbee Media brings current, real-world agency experience directly into the classroom.
Rather than teaching marketing as a purely theoretical subject, our sessions focus on how students can actually use it — whether that's promoting their creative work, building an audience, finding clients or launching a freelance business.
Led by Youbee Media's Rebecca Hopwood, workshops are interactive, accessible and adapted to the students in the room, encouraging questions and helping participants apply what they're learning to their own ideas and ambitions.
Our workshops help students understand the role different platforms can play within a wider social media strategy, including:
Sessions have covered practical areas including:
The focus throughout is on giving students ideas, tools and techniques they can realistically implement themselves — often with limited budgets and resources.
Our partnership has also expanded beyond the core workshop programme.
In both 2025 and 2026, Youbee Media supported the Freelance Summer School, delivered collaboratively by Leeds Arts University and Leeds Conservatoire, helping students and graduates develop practical skills for building sustainable freelance careers.
Across the wider partnership, Youbee Media has now delivered more than 40 workshops and supported over 250 students with practical digital marketing and social media training.
The real impact of these workshops isn't simply teaching students how Instagram, TikTok or LinkedIn works.
It's helping them change the way they think about social media.
For many students, these platforms have always been part of everyday life. Through practical social media training, we help them understand how the same platforms can become tools for building their professional profile, showcasing creative work, reaching potential clients and generating opportunities.
Students leave with practical ideas they can put into action immediately, alongside a clearer understanding of how marketing can support their creative ambitions.
For Youbee Media, the continued partnership with Leeds Arts University is an opportunity to share the experience we gain working with businesses every day and help equip the next generation of creative entrepreneurs and freelancers with the skills to promote what they do.
